Spider chart
How to read the radar chart that summarizes the sensory profile of the samples in a tasting.
What it is
The spider chart (radar chart) is the primary visualization of a sample's profile. It's a polygon whose vertices correspond to the protocol's attributes and whose distance from the center indicates the mean intensity scored by the panel.
On screen you'll see two labels: the block that contains the chart is titled Sensory profile, and the chart itself shows its own header, Sample comparison.
It appears in the Results section of the tasting, in descriptive and hedonic tests (ranking has its own report).
How to read it
- Each axis represents a protocol attribute.
- Each value along the axis (0–10) is the panel mean for that attribute.
- The polygon area gives you an overall sense of the profile's intensity: a "vivid and rich" sample versus a "flat" one.
- Attributes marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones where the ANOVA detects a statistically significant difference between samples (p less than 0.05). The note at the bottom of the chart reminds you of this: "Attributes with a statistically significant difference between samples (p less than 0.05)."
Comparison between samples
If a tasting has multiple samples, AreaCacao overlays the polygons on the same chart, each in its own color. Each series is labeled with the word Blind followed by the blind code (for example, Blind 742), both in the legend and on the chart. This is useful for:
- Comparing two batches of the same cacao.
- Validating that a new recipe keeps the expected profile.
- Showing a HoReCa client the difference between your chocolate and a competitor's.
The chart overlays up to 6 samples legibly. If the tasting has more, you'll see the warning "⚠ N additional samples not shown (overlay is legible up to 6). Consider grid mode." (the app calls the grid view "grid mode," one mini-wheel per sample).
Chart requirements
- The Sensory profile block only appears in Results when there are at least 3 attributes with data and at least one sample with scores. With fewer attributes, the section skips it and goes straight to the results table.
Limitations
- The spider chart shows means. A sample with a mean of 7 can hide a highly divided panel (half score 4, half score 10). To see the spread, look at the standard deviation (SD) in the aggregation table.
- With many attributes the polygon becomes dense. Lean on the table to read exact values and on the asterisks to locate the relevant differences.